Missionaries and mandarins

The Jesuits in China

Rome not only collected the books from many foreign cultures; in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it became the center of
missionary enterprises that spanned the world. In China, Jesuits
like Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall von Bell performed an
incredible task of translation and interpretation. They learned
the language; they made converts, some of high rank; and, in
order to impress the cultivated Chinese elite with western forms
of knowledge, they translated into Chinese the classical western
science of cartography and the radically improved astronomy of
Galileo. They also argued to their western superiors that
Chinese classics--like the Greek and Egyptian ones so prized by
some Roman scholars--had a core of values and tenets that matched
those of Christianity. Eventually the Jesuits' openness to China
led them into trouble; but for the first century and more of
their mission, they did a remarkable job of bringing western
forms of knowledge to China and Chinese forms of thought to the
West. The Vatican preserves remarkable materials from both sides
of this cultural exchange.

Adam Schall von Bell introduced the new astronomy of Galileo,
including the telescope, to China. This single-sheet printed map
with explanatory text shows the stars visible in the sky of
northern China.

This elegant and finely engraved Chinese book on Western
hydraulics by the Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis reveals both the
importation of specific techniques and constructions to China and
the eagerness with which many Chinese accepted European technical
learning. The list of sponsors, a preface by a well-known
convert who was the most skilled of all his peers in mathematics,
and the textual breaks before Christian appellations are all
evidence of the warm reception that Western technology received.
Shown here is a traditional European force pump.

Matteo Ricci's technical explanation in Chinese of European
astronomy was no doubt written with the help of his friend Li
Chih-tsao, who contributed a preface. Notice the main circle's
division into the twelve houses, and their polar projection. The
work contains a preface by Ricci, as well as one by Li Chih-tsao,
with a postscript by another Chinese friend. The prefaces give
only the rough date "the end of the Wan-li reign" (i.e. ca. 1610-
1620).

Adam Schall's assistant, Verbiest, labored in a strange mode not
quite Euclidean and not quite Chinese, as he pondered questions
of the Chinese "I-ching" and geometric form. Aside from being a
fortune book, the "I-ching" was the mainstay of an ancient
philosophy of number and symmetry. It deals much with the
numbers three and six, as seen in Verbiest's hexagons and
triangles. He has larded his pages with sayings from that
classic, apparently in his own hand. This pull-out page is one
of many working notes that were bound together with Verbiest's
printed eclipse predictions and his apologia of western astronomy
for the Manchu court.

A group of prominent men in Canton gathered to produce a formal
letter of respect to Father Tseng (the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo),
calling him "Great Teacher and Priest, Master Tseng, Great Person
Removed from Office." The last phrase refers to Semedo's
imprisonment and banishment by the court in 1616, along with
other Jesuits. Many fled to Macao, just outside Canton, but
started returning to their posts throughout China when the furor
subsided in 1620. In 1637, the date of the letter, Semedo was
about to depart for the West.

This three-part manuscript catalog shows the books published and
owned by an unidentified branch of Jesuits in China. On the
reverse of sheet "C" is the signature of Philippe Couplet (1622-
1693), which was discovered while examining the manuscript in
preparation for shipment to the Library of Congress for the 1993
exhibition. This allows us to deduce (in the absence of any
other information) that Couplet, an important biographer and
historian of the mission as well as sponsor of important Latin
translations of Chinese classics, supervised its production.

(History of the life of Christ, with illustrations),
Chin-chiang,
Fukien: The Chin-chiang Church,
1637,

The Jesuit Giulio Aleni brought western iconography to China,
where it was used as the Chinese themselves had used
illustrations, especially in Buddho-Taoist teaching. Here we
have an intricate block-printed book of illustrations used as an
aid to proselytization. Numbers in the text portion at the
bottom of pages refer to figures and arrangements in the scenes
of Christ's life.

In 1649, the Spanish Dominican Francisco Varo arrived in Southern
China. Seeking a more direct way to master the language, he
wrote "The Art of Mandarin Language" in Spanish. Here we see
displayed the addendum, "Brevis methodus confessionis
instituendae," written by Father Basilis of Glemona from the
apostolate of Shensi province, in northern China. It is
important evidence of missionary practices. Its romanized
version of the common spoken Cantonese rapidly taught new
missionaries how to perform rites and sacraments and hear
confessions for potential converts in Chinese by rote; this tool
was a Dominican answer to the Jesuits's method of long
preparation in literary Chinese.